Snow White
by electric caterpillar
Summary: Shinji at Rei's side. rated m to be safe for descriptions of nudity and bodily functions
1. Chapter 1

a/n: based off a dream i had so forgive the total absence of explanation lol

this wasn't written to be romantic or erotic but im not going to hold a grudge if you interpret it that way

tbc maybe. if i feel like it.

**Snow White**

* * *

"You need to eat," said he, and "you're getting too thin," "you're going to starve," "you're going to die!," but no remark could stir her, as Shinji determined for himself on the third day.

The third day Shinji found Ayanami unmoved from the position he left her in, huddled in what passed for a bed in her unlit room in the half-demolished apartment block, nude and mute and smelling powerfully of unwashed woman, he determined he would not talk her into eating.

She wouldn't look at him. She was watching something invisible occurring in the wall of her room. She seemed to be dreaming wide awake. All that moved in the sea-like deep gray of the room were the curtains, turned by the breeze which crept in from the window Shinji opened when he arrived.

"Ayanami," said Shinji, and he cried "Ayanami!," and then she looked at him, and he wished she hadn't. How deep and distant the pits of her eyes, the weight of them, the look of a very old woman, impossibly old, looking out of that mask of fair female child. Her look which contained the unendurable pain of her living, summoned to him for a purpose he discovered he had misplaced.

He grimaced; he swallowed audibly; he put his hand uneasily on the back of Ayanamis.

"You must eat," he said pathetically.

Ayanami did not even blink. Her mouth hung a little open, chapped and cracked, but it did not bleed. Her breath stank, but not the homey fetidness of unbrushed teeth; it smelled bitter, and base, and chemical, and corrosive. She smelled of formaldehyde.

Her little breasts hitched beneath the thin stained sheet Shinji had dressed her in the first day he found her, huddled here amongst the ruin of her young life. She became easier to see as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the bruises like storm clouds on the nape of her neck and shoulders from being laid upon so long, the uniform mute purplishness of her face, of the dark rings enunciating her staring gaze, the gouge of stomach button and dull pennies of her nipples shriveled with cold beneath the sheet.

"Ayanami," he pleaded, "Ayanami," and touched her wrist, the minuscule brittle bones like sewing needles so familiar to him, so familiar, they bent to his touch and broke his heart.

"I've brought you food," said Shinji to the skin of Ayanami, and undid his school satchel to root through it, "so please eat."

Ayanami did not reply.

"See," said Shinji, holding every item as it was named in Ayanami's line of sight, "I've brought you apples, and candy, and milk, and some curry mix. I'll make this for you. Okay?"

Ayanami did not reply.

"You like milk. I've seen you drink it. Will you drink some milk?"

Shinji shod the cellophane skin from the straw that came attached to the baby blue box, pierced the thin silver membrane on the crown of the cardboard, and put the straw in Ayanami's mouth — very slowly, very cautiously, it was stiff and he feared prodding her gums or tongue and hurting her. It lay where he placed it, Ayanami's scaled tacky tongue totally disinterested in the intruder.

Shinji squeezed the box a little, thinking to feed Ayanami like a sipping hummingbird, and he could see the moon-colored liquid pool at the bright red grotto of her throat. Fearing she might drown, Shinji hastened to turn her head for her, and the milk became a thin obscene stream from the corner of her mouth to her jaw, like a spectral smile.

Somehow, that was too horrible for Shinji to see, and he had to sit for a minute on the floor beside Snow White, one hand hiding his eyes.

"You like milk," he insisted softly, "I've seen you drink it. Why won't you drink it?"

Ayanami did not reply. He peered up at her from between his fingers and for one mortally terrifying moment, he was certain she was dead.

He stood, very slowly, he squeezed her little white hand, he said softly, "I'll make you some curry."

Her kitchen, he discovered, was not sufficiently furnished to be called a kitchen. It was a half-room ended with loose pipes and wires from which the stove had been ripped out, rectangles of light linoleum where counters or cupboards had been. There were the black and fly-infested remains of something in a styrofoam takeout container laying on the floor besides a wad of fabric, too stiff with dried blood and other substances to be used any more.

He had chosen the curry specifically for its cheerful and brightly colored box, the appetizing red and yellow and cute kitten mascot which announced the brand title in fat, happy bubble letters. He left it on the kitchen floor, and trod on it as he exited.

Near tears, Shinji returned to Ayanami's bedside, and saw with despair he could step into her look as if into a spotlight. A housefly had alighted high on her cheek and seemed to be sipping the brine from her right eye.

"Do you want candy?" he asked, and his voice came out very high, cracking twice, and he felt deeply ashamed. He swiped two drops from his face with his shirt sleeve and inhaled deeply.

"It's good," he said, "it's good, you'll like this."

He fished from the colorful envelope gummy candies, milky-translucent like carved gems, and prodded her pliant dry lips with them.

"It's good," he promised, but she would not reply. She would not reply.

"I brought you some chocolate, too," Shinji said, unwrapping the confection, his movements a little erratic now. The bar he angled intentionally to trespass Ayanami's still white teeth and meet the tip of her tongue. He prodded it, insisting, "This is good, this is so good, try some. Try a bite, Ayanami."

He left to get her a cup of water; finding no cups, and no running water, he returned and crouched by her side for a few minutes, putting his brow on her little hand which lay half-curled, cold as metal, and so still.

"Please eat," he said, and discovered he was weeping.

"This is white chocolate," he said, putting the disc at the bottom of her mouth, "it's good. There are cookies in it. It looks like you, because you're so pale. Isn't that cute?"

Ayanami stared.

"Isn't that cute, Ayanami? Try some. Please try some. Please eat."

He took a mouthful from the box of milk he had left on the dilapidated bedside table, warmed it in his mouth, and tried to put it into Ayanami's mouth, like a baby, he thought, and was struck suddenly and inexorably by the image of a swaddled baby, out of screams, dying quietly in a city gutter in the dead of winter.

She would not drink, and he was very afraid of drowning her, mortally afraid of ruining her. He cleaned her mouth on his sleeve.

"Please eat," he murmured.

He thought he heard her make a sound. Perhaps she swallowed the milk slime and saliva he left in her mouth, or at last blinked her eyes.

"Please eat, Ayanami," he pleaded, and put a coin of white chocolate to her lips, which she would not take.

He ate one. It was sweet and milky and very good. It quickly became a rich syrup in his mouth.

He kissed her. Her mouth felt awful, cool and dry as a snake and yielding as if it were inanimate, marbles and stones tumbled together, crushed open beneath his. He thought he tasted the fragrance of her blood.

She moaned. It sounded reptilian, mechanical, cogs in an antique clock turning for the first time in a hundred years. She squinted. Perhaps she cried, or perhaps it was only Shinji's tears dressed her cheeks.

"It's good," she said.


	2. Chapter 2

Ayanami was so silent, even for her, Shinji thought she certainly must be sleeping, and so he nearly leapt out of his skin when his hand approached the upper boundaries of her ribs and she murmured mutely into the humid heat, "not there, please."

"Why not there?"

Silently, laying still in her repose into the green tile bath, with the robotic jerking gesture of agony Ayanami lifted her arm; revealed beneath the crease of her gauzy breast was a seam like a string of beads, silver staples standing boldly out of the moon-white skin.

"Oh," said Shinji, "oh."

"It hurts. Not there, please." Her eyes had not opened. Her mouth barely stirred. Shinji nodded, nodded, nodded.

"Sorry," he tried to say, but the sound that came from his mouth was merely a puff of air. He had tried hard not to see her breast, but he did, and he found he could not now look away. It was so sweet. It looked like a cake. Her nipple was so dark, so intensely red - it looked like a cherry. Unlike his, her lovely breasts, unlike his, the piano of her visible ribs, her concave tummy, the elegant descent of her miniscule waist to her prominent hipbones. It was impossible not to see.

He moved to the washcloth to her forearm, a safe place, though he had already cleaned it twice. It would soon be scrubbed raw. She did not comment. She looked asleep.

"Sorry," he repeated.

The hair beneath her arm was sprouts, barely visible. Her flesh of her was taut, pinkish. It made him think of the translucent flesh of a white fish.

"Ikari?" said Ayanami.

He looked very hard at his fist, curled timidly in his lap, and he was suddenly very aware of the fact his entire supply of blood seemed to be exhibited in his face.

"Yes?" he rasped, ashamed of the sound of it.

He felt Ayanami had opened her eyes, felt her considering him. He resisted hiding his face in his hands.

Her look felt so gentle to him, almost unnoticeable, felt so soft, unlike the loud red and yellow looks of ordinary people, she was the thinnest, finest, fairest blue. "Extraordinary" was the word that occurred to him - Ayanami is extraordinary.

"You must wash my front," she directed him.

"I will," capitulated Shinji, but he found when he tried to lift his hand it began to quiver and shiver just pathetically.

Ayanami waited patiently, and commented, "I can't do it myself."

"I know," said Shinji, and it was almost a whine, and he grimaced with shame, "I know. I will."

"You must wash my hair."

"Okay," said Shinji, and rubbed the ribbons of seafoam soap vigorously into her hair which flagged weighted with water outside the rim of the tub, and even her skull was different, large and perfectly round like the distended stomach of a very pregnant woman and seeming delicate as a crystal unicorn in his hands, so small.

Ayanami was so small, so thin and so small. They were the same age, he recalled, but she looked like a child. She watched him wearily.

He helped her slide, helped lower her hair slowly so as not to slip into the pool of perfume.

"Is it okay?" he asked, for the thousandth time, "is it too hot?"

She lowered her eyes. She seemed to sigh. Shinji felt if it were anyone else, he would fall through the floor in shame on the spot, but Ayanami seemed merely sad, infinitely tired and sad, and he fell into the funnel of her sorrow. He loved to touch the spare tendrils of her hair, turning beneath the crust of foam floating on the surface of the water. He'd never experienced such softness; unendurable. He coaxed detergent from it with the tips of his fingers.

"It's okay," she murmured. Was she hurt or falling asleep? Shinji touched the seam of white where her curls began, pushed them loyally from where they could become a nuisance, swiped an angel feather of soap bubbles from her brow. The impulse to kiss her temple came and went as quickly as a recollection of a forgotten dream.

Inexplicably, he wondered if his father ever touched his mother like this, these tender touches, ever waited on her in this way - perhaps when she was swollen with him.

"Ayanami?"

He gripped her, gently but firmly on her ribs to slide her back to rest again against the rim of the tub. Her stomach! Her head rolled. She was like a baby. How helpless, exactly like a baby.

Her face was taut with pain but Shinji could only see the translucent plane of her stomach - she was so thin, she was so thin, she was so thin. He thought it was almost disgusting, but he found his trousers still a little too small.

He was sickened by himself. He hated himself. He hated, hated, hated himself.

He drew the chain that blocked the stews escape; he pulled the coarse towel over Ayanami's hair, over her unhappy grimace.

But he thought sometimes, like now, as Ayanami lay replete with sorrow in his very arm, pliant, silent, clean and new-seeming and pink as a baby rose, that he could love Ayanami.


End file.
